Political maneuver angers some members of the Louisiana Senate Retirement Committee

Baton Rouge -- A measure merging two of the state's retirement systems leapfrogged over the Louisiana Senate Retirement Committee when it was tacked onto another, noncontroversial bill before a House panel Wednesday. Combining the two bills drew outrage from members of the committee, several of whom walked out rather than vote for the bill, and from representatives of the Louisiana School Employees' Retirement System, which would be merged into the Teachers' Retirement System of Louisiana under the measure.

File photoRep. Sam Jones

The House Retirement Committee also approved a separate bill that would increase to employee contributions to the retirement system Wednesday.

Explaining that he had taken students to watch the Legislature in past years, school employees' system Executive Director Charles Bujol said, "I don't think I would take my class to the Legislature today."

Rep. Sam Jones, D-Franklin, led the walkout, which briefly forced the committee into recess so other members could be brought in to bring the panel back to a quorum. He described the process as a "farce."

Because the merger, a part of Gov. Bobby Jindal's proposed overhaul of the retirement systems, is now "hitchhiking" on a bill that has already passed the Senate, it could be passed with a vote in the House and the agreement of the upper chamber. That would preclude any Senate committee hearings, the only time legislators are able to hear public comment on a bill. The last-minute decision to amend Senate Bill 6, which had previously only required school systems give the retirement system an annual report on privatized jobs, also meant that opponents were unable to prepare for the vote ahead of time.

"I think that the good faith of this Legislature with the citizens of this state has been breached," said Mary Patricia Ray, a representative of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers.

The bill, as amended and unanimously passed by the committee, would merge the management of the two retirement systems on July 1 and give the two organizations a year and a half to complete the merger. The assets would remain in separate accounts and the school employee's system, which represents employees such as bus drivers and janitors, would get a total of four positions on the teacher retirement system's board. The bill also requires that the systems eliminate 30 employees by the end of the merger.

The House committee had already given its approval to the original version of the merger bill but it has not yet been taken up for a vote by representatives.

"There's going to be a lot more hanky-panky played with retirement bills in the last seven days (of the session)," Jones warned. "Its time for people to put their radars up."

The heavily revised version of the employee contribution increase, which gained approval of all members of the committee but Jones, now only goes into effect after an employee has a pay increase of 4 percent. At that point, the employee's contributions to the retirement system will increase by .5 percent of salary every six months for two years, resulting in a total increased contribution of 2 percent of salary.

Employees now contribute 8 percent of their salaries to the retirement systems and the state pays about 6 percent of the employees' salaries toward their retirement, though additional contributions are made to pay off the past underfunding of the system.

The increases would also be suspended when the retirement systems reached 80 percent funding.

Opponents of the bill, including officials at the two retirement systems it effects and Retired State Employee's Association, have argued that the measure is an unconstitutional infringement on employee retirement benefits and would create an administrative nightmare for departments that would now have to more closely track employee raises and the status of the retirement system before cutting paychecks.

Later in the day, the Senate approved House Bills 9 and 10, which give judges the ability to strip the pension benefits from public employees or elected officials convicted of corruption. The bills by Rep. Tony Ligi, R-Metairie, consist of a constitutional amendment and a law that would put it into place.

Ligi has unsuccessfully championed similar bills in the past, but those failed largely due to opposition from the Louisiana Sheriff's Association and other groups that worried they were too broad and could require a state worker to forfeit his or her retirement due to incompetence rather than corruption. The current bills only allow the benefits to be taken away in cases where the public employee or a third party gains financially from a crime or when the public employee committed a sex crime on a minor. In both cases, the crime would have to be related to the employee's duties.

The bills only affect employees hired after Jan. 1 and give the judge discretion to direct some of the benefit to the employee's spouse or dependents if they were not involved in the crime. Employees who surrender their benefits would get a rebate of the amount they contributed to the retirement system, as do all employees who leave the systems before retirement, but the judge could order that money used to pay restitution.

The House must now approve amendments made by the Senate to the law before the two bills go to Jindal's desk.